City of Ember

About the cast

SAOIRSE RONAN (Lina Mayfleet)

Saoirse Ronan received many accolades culminating in an Academy Award nomination for her performance as the young Briony Tallis in Atonement at the tender age of 13. More recently Ronan completed production on Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones where she plays Susie Salmon opposite actors Rachel Weisz and Mark Wahlberg.

Ronan was born in NYC and raised in Ireland and got her start on two Irish television series The Clinic and Proof from 2003 - 2005. Her first feature film role was in the Houdini film Death Defying Acts co-starring Catherine Zeta Jones and Guy Pearce. Additional work includes the Amy Heckerling film I Could Never Be Your Woman with Michelle Pfeiffer and The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey.

HARRY TREADAWAY (Doon Harrow)

Harry trained at LAMDA graduating in 2006.  He took time off in 2004 to film Brothers Of The Head for Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe.  2006 BIFA Nomination for Most Promising Newcomer forBrothers Of The Head.  Brothers Of The Head winner of 2006 Special Jury Prize at Boston Independent Film Festival and winner of 2006 Best New Britsh Feature at Edinburgh International Film Festival.  Control winner of 2007 Regards Jeunes Prize, Europa Cinemas Label Prize for Best European Film and Honorable Mention for CICAE Art and Essai Prize for Best Film at the Cannes Film Festival (Director`s Fortnight) 2007.

Harry is currently filming on Fish Tank for Andrea Arnold.  He will then go on to film Pelican Blood for Karl Golden.

BILL MURRAY (Mayor Cole)

Bill Murray won the 2004 Golden Globe, the Independent Spirit and BAFTA Awards, as well as a slew of others including Los Angeles Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle and National Society of Film Critics Awards for his role in Lost in Translation, directed by Sofia Coppola and co-starring Scarlett Johansson.  He was also nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as Bob Harris, a role that Sofia Coppola wrote with Murray in mind, despite never having met him.

Murray began his show business career as a member of the National Lampoon Radio Hour, alongside Dan Ackroyd, Gilda Radner and John Belushi, and soon joined the cast of Saturday Night Live with the others. The show became a milestone in American satire, winning Murray, (alongside Dan Ackroyd and others,) the Emmy Award in 1977 for Outstanding Writing in Comedy. Thirty years later, Saturday Night Live continues to launch the career of new comedic actors, as well as attracting star names in guest appearances.

Bill Murray’s film career began with Meatballs, the 1979 hit comedy that marked the beginning of an ongoing collaboration with director Ivan Reitman and actor Harold Raimis. A year later he was directed in Caddyshack by Harold Raimis, creating the role of Carl Spackler, voted one of the top twenty movie characters of all time by Premiere Magazine. In 1984 he was reunited with Reitman in the blockbuster Ghostbusters, starring alongside Sigourney Weaver, Dan Ackroyd and Harold Raimis. His performance earned him a Golden Globe nomination. The film’s enormous box office success was repeated five years later, by the same director and cast, in Ghostbusters II.

In 1993, Murray starred in Groundhog Day, a comedy hit directed by Harold Raimis, and co-starring Andie MacDowell.  In the same year he starred alongside Robert de Niro in Mad Dog and Glory, directed by John McNaughton. His performance in Rushmore (1998), directed by Wes Anderson, won the actor a Golden Satellite Award, as well as an American Comedy Award and Independent Spirit, Los Angeles and New York Circle Critics Awards, and his second Golden Globe nomination. He worked again with Wes Anderson on the director’s award-winning films The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), co-starring with Gene Hackman and Anjelica Houston, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004).

In 2005, Bill Murray starred in Jim Jarmusch’s film Broken Flowers, for which he was nominated for a Satellite Award.

TIM ROBBINS (Loris Harrow)

Born October 16, 1958 in West Covina, California and raised in New York City's Greenwich Village, Tim Robbins has a long list of notable credits as an actor, director, writer and producer of films and theater.

Key acting roles are in such films as Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River, Isabel Croixet's The Secret Life of Words, Philip Noyce's Catch a Fire, Robert Altman’s The Player and Short Cuts, Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption, The Coen Brothers’ The Hudsucker Proxy,  Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds, Mark Pellington's Arlington Road, Michael Winterbottom’s Code 46, Michel Gondry’s Human Nature,  Tony Bill's Five Corners, Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder and Ron Shelton’s Bull Durham.

Robbins has won numerous awards for his acting including an Oscar, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actor for Mystic River, Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival and the Golden Globe for Best Actor for The Player. He was nominated by the Golden Globes for Best Actor for Bob Roberts and by the Screen Actors Guild for Best Actor for The Shawshank Redemption.

As a director, Robbins distinguished himself with Cradle Will Rock, which he also wrote and produced, winning Best Film and Best Director at the Sitges Film Festival in Barcelona and the National Board of Review Award for Special Achievement in Filmmaking in the United States.

Dead Man Walking, which he also wrote and produced, won multiple awards including the Academy Award for Best Actress for Susan Sarandon, the Christopher Award, the Humanitas Award and four awards at the Berlin Film Festival, as well as an 4 Oscar nominations including Best Director and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Screenplay.

His first film, Bob Roberts, won the Bronze Award at the Tokyo International Festival and Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor at the Boston Film Festival.

Robbins also serves as Artistic Director for the Actors’ Gang, a theater company formed in 1982 that has over 80 productions and more than 100 awards to their credit. As a playwright he has been produced in London, Paris, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland. His latest play, Embedded, played to sold out audiences for over four months at the Public Theater in New York  before playing the Riverside Studios in London and embarking on a National Tour in the U.S.  Most recently he directed the Actors Gang in their shockingly relevant and wildly successful adaptation of George Orwell's 1984 which for the past two years has toured to over 40 states and to four continents.

From 2006 until the present, Le Petit Theatre de Pain's production of Embedded has been touring France, most recently playing at the Theatre du Soleil in Paris. In the US, Embedded was revived recently in productions in Chicago and Tampa Bay.  In addition, Robbins stage adaptation of Dead Man Walking has been performed in over 140 universities nationwide. Rights to perform the play are exclusive to educational institutions until 2014. In order to obtain the rights for the play, universities must commit  two departments other than theater arts to offer courses on the death penalty. Throughout the country and the world for the past four years, symposiums, lectures and debates have been held in conjunction with the theatrical productions leading to a substantial increase in the dialogue and education surrounding this important issue.

Robbins is also very proud to sponsor educational programs with the Actors Gang that provide arts education to Elementary, Middle and High School students in the L.A. area. The Gang has also worked for the past three years providing theatrical workshops to incarcerated inmates in the L.A. prison system.

Robbins lives in New York City with his partner, Susan Sarandon, and is the proud father of 3 mischievous young adults.

About the Director

GIL KENAN (Director)

Gil Kenan was signed by his agent David Styne straight out of UCLA film school on the basis of his award-winning 9-minute short film entitled The Lark. Shortly after, he was hired to direct the motion-capture animation project MONSTER HOUSE, produced by Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.